The Union government will build a 100-bed yoga and naturopathy hospital in the city soon, official sources said. The state government has identified a 20-acre plot of land for the project at Binjhagiri near Chandaka on the outskirts of the city.

The director of Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy in New Delhi, Dr B T Chidananda Murthy, told TOI over the phone that the proposed hospital would come up at an estimated cost of Rs 25 crore. There will be 50 general ward beds and 25 each special and deluxe beds in the hospital for indoor patients. Besides, there will be daily outdoor clinics, he said. The hospital will also have a state-of-the art yoga hall and a research laboratory for chronic diseases.

Murthy said the state government wrote to the council recently, confirming the land allotment. "A central team will come to Orissa in the first week of May to finalise the plan. After taking possession of the land, the construction will start in less than six months," he said.

Murthy said the council wants to have at least six such premier branches across the country for which the Central government has already given its go ahead. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, cancer, pain management and age-related problems will be the main focus here. Preventive care will be a focus area of the hospital, which will cater to all sections of the society, Murthy said.

It will be the third such project in the country. Work for similar hospitals has already commenced in Karnataka and Haryana. The council, an autonomous body under the department of AYUSH, ministry of health and family welfare, is also keen to establish similar institutions in Bihar and Assam. "We are waiting for land allotment in those states," Murthy said.

Through the regional research hospitals, the council will undertake education, training and research programmes in fundamentals and applied aspects of yoga and naturotherapy, the council director said.

Another thing that should be done is that a branch of this, perhaps focsuing on pharmaceutical aspects, should be established in the foothills of the Gandhamardan Hills. See http://www.orissalinks.com/archives/3421 for a nicely written essay advocating this.

Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy (CCRYN) would start a two-year diploma course in naturopathy and yoga thearpy from next academic year, a top official said on Wednesday.

The course, sanctioned by union health ministry, was to cater to the growing demands for para-medical staff and assistants in the field of naturopathy and yoga therapy, Dr B T Chidananda Murthy, Director, CCRYN, Delhi, told to reporter.

… Stating that there were 12 naturopathy and yogic science colleges in the Country and about 300 doctors were coming out every year, he said the Council from next year would provide a scholarship of Rs 5,000 to those who are getting admitted for degree course outside their state, for the entire five years.

… Under Council’s new initiative, the ministry has approved to open six Central Research Institute for Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences at a cost of Rs 25 crore each, and three had already started construction in Karnataka,Haryana and Manipur, which would have 100 bedded hospitals.

The Council was negotiating with the Governments of Orissa, Jharkhand and Assam for starting such Centres, since it required a minimum of 10 acre of land free of cost.Discussions were on with Tamil Nadu government also, he said.

The Department of Ayush has initiated efforts to upgrade nine more institutions in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy as National Institutes of Ayush under the central sector scheme to uniformly improve quality of tertiary level healthcare and improve facilities and standards of medical education to meet global demand of Ayush.

Detailed project reports on requirements to upgrade these institutions, aiming to achieve the optimum infrastructure in the next five years, would be prepared soon. The project would be divided into two phases, where in the first phase would cover the capital work at equipment required and the salary, stipend and cosumables to be put in place in the current Five Year Plan, posted to end in the financial year 2010-11.

The second phase of upgradation to develop infrastructure to achieve optimum requirements, would commence in the 12th Five Year Plan, starting from the financial year 2011-12. Since these are existing and functioning institutions, the two-phased project would be appropriate for the proposed upgradation, comments Dept of Ayush sources. A call for eligible consultant firms to engage in preparing detailed project report has been issued by the department of late.

Post upgradation, the Ayurvedic institutions could accommodate 100 BAMS, almost 100 MDs and PhDs and 25 nursing students per year, even as the Unani and Homoeopathic institutions would have 100 BUMS/BHMS seats and 35 MD seats for seven subjects per year, uniformly.

The proposed National Institutes are part of the departments effort to upgrade the educational standards in the Ayurveda, Unani and Homoeopathy colleges in the country, strengthen existing research institutions and ensure a time-bound research programme on identified diseases for which these systems have an effective treatment, draw up schemes for promotion, cultivation and regeneration of medicinal plants used in these systems and to evolve pharmacopoeial standards for ISM and Homoeopathy medicines.

… The existing bed strength will be upgraded to 200 for Ayurvedic and Unani institutions and to 100 for Homoeopathy institutions with adequate treatment and diagnostic facilities and full-fledged testing laboratories with complete computer facilities will be in place in each of these institutes to bring in development of the segment in regional level.

At present, the department has eight apex educational institutions established to promote excellence in the Ayush segments – The National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur, Rajasthan, National Institute of Siddha, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, National Institute of Unani Medicine, Bangalore, Karnataka, Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, New Delhi, National Institute of Naturopathy, Pune, Maharashtra, National Institute of Homoeopathy, Kolkata, West Bengal, Rashtriya Ayurved Vidyapeeth, New Delhi and the Institute of Post Graduate Teaching & Research in Ayurveda, Jamnagar, Gujarat.

Ayurvedic treatment, for instance, is now a Rs 8,000-crore industry, and growing at 20 per cent annually. And so you have Ramesh Vangal, former head of Pepsi India, having established an ayurveda firm, now merging it with Coimbatore Arya Vaidya Pharmacy to become the largest ayurveda company in India. Yash Birla has taken a majority stake in Kerala Vaidyashala, the therapy chain. Ayurvaid Hospitals, promoted by a Kochi-based group, got equity investment of Rs 4.5 crore last year from a US-based fund. And the Tata Group has now agreed with an NGO to jointly set up an Institute of Ayurveda Integrated Medicine near Bangalore, to offer formal graduate and postgraduate degrees, beside a 100-bed ayurveda and yoga hospital, plus research and drug production. The Tatas are putting in Rs 34 crore for the IIT-type institute. There are similar plans from the Mata Amrithanandamayee trust.

All this is excellent news, for the simple reason that when business gets into the picture, documentation and systems and reports have to be put in place. This has been the problem all along with what are loosely called alternative systems of medicine to standard allopathy. Each practitioner has his or her own way of doing things and you have to accept this on trust. And if something works, there is no publicly accessible system of how and why. One outcome has been the mutual scorn between allopathy and these other systems of treatment, with close to no attempt at reaching out to each other or researching if each can usefully learn from the other and so, improve itself. The public would benefit enormously if they could go to one place and get the combined benefit of different systems of knowledge working in tandem. You will never get this unless these processes are all systemised, subject to peer and public review, and are allowed to be replicated in a laboratory setting: this is the way knowledge progresses. If business and investors take a hand, this process should get a push. As, for instance, with the proposed Tata university.

Following is a letter that Dr. Karmee has sent to many people. This is an excellent work. It is well researched and based on something unique to the location, the Gandhamardan Hills of Baragarh and Balangir. (Considering that many in Orissa may not be aware of Gandhamardan Hills being in Orissa and/or its medicinal values, I have a companion piece on it at http://www.orissalinks.com/orissagrowth/archives/2776.)

I hope others will also focus on unique aspects and attributes of other parts of orissa and write to the higher education task force (HETF) about it.

Respected Mr. Patnaik, CM of Odisha and Members of the Higher Education Task force,

I appreciate the formation of higher education task force by the state government. Also, I am hopeful that such innovative steps will definitely sharpen the higher education of Odisha.

Sirs,

I would like to request the higher education task force to recommend the establishment of a “National Institute of Ayurveda” in Gandhamardan area in western Odisha. I am sure many of us are aware of the potential of Gandhamardan mountain and medicinal plants in it.

In this document, I am presenting the details about the “Gamdhamardan mountain as a reservoir of medicinal plants” with scientific references; thereby, making a case for the establishment of a National Institute of Ayurveda.

I am sure our respected CM, who is the author of the “Garden of Life: An introduction to the Healing Plants of India” will take this matter seriously. Also, I am hopeful that the higher education task force will take the necessary steps; so that, “the medicinal plants in Gamdhamardan mountain” will not get lost with time.

Please have a look on the following write-up for further details.

Thanking you with best regards,

Sanjib

1. “National Institute of Ayurveda” is a must in Gandhamardan area: Introduction and Analysis:

Gandhamardan mountain range is known world wide as a reservoir for medicinal plants. It is located in the western Odisha. More specifically, it is located in between Balangir and Bargarh district (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Map showing location of Gandgmardan mountain in between Balangir and Bargarh district

Many eminent scholars of life sciences have done a lot of research on the medicinal plants available in this mountain range. In fact, this hill range is legendary. It has found a place in folklore and mythology -of how Hanuman plucked Bisalyakarani, a medicinal plant, from this hill to save the life of Laxman in the battle of Lanka in “The Ramayana”. In addition, it is known to the whole world how this hill range was at the centre of one of the most prominent ecological movements, that is, the battle between environmentalists keen on protecting aryurvedic plants and the then state-owned Bharat Aluminium Corporation.

Apart from this, there are many scientific journals and books that are mentioning about the potential of medicinal plants available in Gandhamardan mountain (see the reference list)1-5. The state/central govt must establish a “National Institute of Ayurveda” in this place. Right now, both Balangir and Bargarh (Paikmal) each have one Ayurvedic College. Establishing a national level institute on Ayurvedic Medicine will help to a great extent to these colleges by carrying out research in emerging areas. Recently, research on ayurvedic medicine is attracting considerable attention in India and abroad.

It is important to note that, significant developments have boosted systematic research on different aspects of ayurveda and traditional medicine in India. They include the Golden Triangle project jointly managed by CSIR, ICMR and AYUSH; the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) of CSIR and various schemes of DST and DBT.

Additionally, ayurveda is also entering to the mainstream “Drug Discovery”. Following graph show the growing demand of research on Ayurvedic medicine.

In addition to this, a paper by “Reddy and Pattnaik” from the Forestry and Ecology Division, National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad 500 037, Andhra Pradesh, India points out many interesting facts about “Gandhamardan hill” 4.

It states that, after analyzing and studying the plant resources of Gandhamardan hill range a total of 912 vascular species belonging to 556 genera under 142 families were found. Herbs dominate the flora followed by trees, climbers and shrubs.

Therefore, proper conservation and management plans are needed to save the natural resources, especially medicinal plants, of this sacred hill range. Many botanists fear that this reserve of medicinal plants could be lost in the next few years if proper care is not taken and the indiscriminate collection and smuggling of herbs by local villagers is not stopped. The state forest department which is supposed to guard this botanical wealth is not able to do enough to stop all these developments because they lack of the knowledge and expertise about these plants. In fact, they have no clue which are useful medicinal plants and which are not.

In addition, in these places there is no organized way of farming of the medicinal plants. They just grow in the wild. Therefore, it is very difficult to guard these species. Taking the advantage of this situation any villages or smugglers can walk into the forest and collect the herbs. It is very important that the government should takes steps to grow these plants, harvest these properly, and finally do the marketing of these medicinal plants and herbs in a well organized manner. It should take care of the cultivation and preservation of these plants like it is doing for other forest products like sal seeds or kendu leaves etc.

However, intellectually this problem can be solved by establishment of a National Institute of Ayurveda. The above discussion/ description/ scientific observation strongly suggests the establishment of a National Institute of Ayurveda near Gandhamardan mountain.

2. Following are some of my points in support of establishing a National Institute of Ayurveda in Gandhamardan area:

* West is very much keen on establishing institute on ayurveda. One such successful institution is the National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine established by Dr. Scott Gerson, USA, (http://niam.com/corp-web/index.htm). This is an example of an institute that has carried out research into Ayurvedic practices to a great extent. In this context, we must use our native expertise. In addition, the National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine, USA can be a collaborative partner for establishing an institute Gandhamardan area.

* This mountain is very important to all of us and to the world. We should use our natural medicinal resources very judiciously. It is also very surprising that no steps have been taken for the preservation of these high-valued plants. It is the right time to establish a National Institute of Ayurveda in this area.

* As we know this mountain range is a reserve for medicinal plants. Therefore, it will provide adequate environment for cutting edge research/studies in different areas of ayurvedic medicine per international standard.

* Establishment of a National Institute of Ayurveda will help for organized way of farming the medicinal plants; which just grow in the wild. This will also help in preserving different rare species of plants.

* This Institute will provide a boost to the ongoing research/academic activities by Ayurvedic College Balangir and Shri Nrusinghanath Ayurved College Paikmal, Bargarh on this area. Along this line, establishing a National Institute of Ayurveda will make this place a leader in this area of science in national/international level.

* This step will attract companies like Dabur, Ayur, and others to set-up labs/companies in this area.

* From the above discussion it is very clear that research fundings are already available from the leading agencies of India like CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), DST (Department of Science & Technology), and DBT (Department of Biotechnology). So, there will be no problem in setting up labs and developing infrastructure.

* There is a lot of synergistic research going on between Ayurvedic, Homeopathic and Allopathic branches of medicine. This is very clear from our day-to-day life as Allopathic doctors often prescribe medicines of Dabur, Neem, etc. Therefore, establishment of such an institute will further enhance the research between this National Institute of Ayurveda with other institutes viz. VSS Medical College, SCB Medical College etc. of the state.

3. The following steps need to be taken to establish a National Institute of Ayurveda in Gandhamardan

* It is important to look in to the web-site of these model Institutes viz. National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine, USA (http://niam.com/corp-web/index.htm); Gujarat Ayurved University Jamnagar, Gujrat, India (www.ayurveduniversity.com); Rajasthan Ayurved University, Jodhpur Rajasthan (http://www.raujodhpur.org/aboutus.html); National Institute of Ayurved, Jaipur, Rajasthan (http://nia.nic.in/); Ayurvedic university, Hoshiarpur, Punjab; (http://www.financialexpress.com/news/punjab-clears-first-ayurvedic-university-in-hoshiarpur/517911/; This seems to be a new Institute).

* Immediately, the state govt. should present a proposal to the HRD Ministry for establishing National Institute of Ayurveda in Gandhmardan area.

* Along the line of the above institutes, the state govt. in collaboration with govt. of India must establish a National Institute of Ayurveda in Gandhamardan area.

The National Research Institute of Ayurveda Drug Development (NRIADD) would establish its own complex over three acres of land in the city.

… The institute was earlier functioning as the Central Research Institute (Ayurveda). Das, speaking on the occasion, stressed the importance of standardisation of medical research. She said that ayurvedic research should be upgraded by application of latest knowledge and should be linked to modern medical sciences for advancement.

On the goals of the institute, she said, it should develop into a centre of excellence in ayurveda where integrated team approach by the staff is important.

(1) The proposal to set up a Health University is under the active consideration of the State Government. All the medical colleges in the State would be brought under the university for better management."

(2) In Khordha District: The proposal to upgrade the Capital Hospital into a medical college is also under the consideration of the Government.

(3) Appointment of homeopathic and ayurvedic doctors in place of MBBS doctors in vacant posts. More posts of homeopathic and ayurvedic doctors would be created keeping public welfare in mind.

(4) State Government has issued NOCs for establishment of three medical colleges in the private sector.

(i) In Koraput District: Nabadiganta Educational Trust will set up a hospital at Sunabeda. (Note: There was a report in Sambad earlier that one medical college is being established in Koraput district)

(ii) In Kalahandi District: Selvam Educational and Charitable Trust of Tamil Nadu will establish a college at Jaring in Kalahandi district.

(iii) In Balasore District: Shri Jagannath Educational and Health Trust will establish the third college at Balasore.

(iv) In Balangir District: Balaji Educational and Charitable Trust (BECT), Pudducherry, has signed an MoU with the WODC for establishment of a medical college at Balangir. The organisation has been given 25 acres free of cost. Construction of the college will start after BECT signed the lease agreement with the collector.

NOTE: Other private medical colleges in the state that have already received approval or are on drawing boards are:

(1) In Khordha District: Institute of Medical Sciences and Sum Hospital (approval received for MBBS course from 2007-08)

(2) In Khordha District: Kalinga Institute of Medical Science (approval received for MBBS course from 2007-08)

(3) In Cuttack District: Earlier the Oriya daily "The Samaja Group (Lok Sevak Mandal)" has shown interest to establish a medical college cum hospital in Cuttack district.

(4) In Sundergarh District: A private medical college is also proposed by WODC in Rourkela.

Following is a list of institutions with non-traditional programs that I compiled earlier. They are categorized as follows: Arts and Crafts, Design, Teachers training, Diploma in Engineering, ITIs, Film and TV, Homeopathy and Ayurveda, Hotel management, Journalism, Law, Library Science, Performance arts, Physical Education, Sanskrit and Social work.